Literacy Strategies for the Multi-Ability Classroom: Part III

This week I’m beginning a new series of workshops for teachers from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services – a dedicated group of teachers with a strong commitment to helping their students build motivation, positive self image and academic skills. The goal is to share strategies for working with struggling readers in multi-ability classrooms in juvenile detention facilities around the state. This is the first of a three-part series designed to address the wide variety of student reading levels in their classrooms. They will return to two follow up workshop in March and April with samples of student work to assist us all in discussing what worked and what was less successful. As an incentive for their students, we will “publish” samples of student work in a showcase booklet. We strongly believe that we can motivate struggling readers through the use of student publication projects.

In preparation for the series I have done classroom observation and teacher training at one of the facilities.  Learning specialist, Suzanne Meyer, has observed classes at two others and worked with teachers and students there to complete a sample “student showcase” project. We have worked with Patricia Martin, an ELA / Reading specialist to select 18 learning strategies designed to simultaneously work with three common types of struggling readers you have in their classrooms
“Non-readers”  who lack decoding skills (430KB pdf)
“Word-callers” who can decode, but lack comprehension skills (358KB pdf)
“Turned-off readers" who have the decoding and comprehension skills, but lack motivation or engagement (389KB pdf)

For an earlier draft with more strategies see: Literacy Strategies for the Multi-Ability Classroom: Part II also find tri-fold guides at: Literacy Strategies for the Multi-Ability Classroom, Part I

For more information on my training workshops for students of all ability levels visit my site: Content Reading Strategies that Work